cially if care were taken in it not to
be ultra-Scottish in mere minutiae, the effect would be to facilitate the
religious union of the two nations. The Scottish assembly, at any rate,
had warmly entertained the notion, and had deputed the difficult and
delicate work to Henderson himself. Henderson, however, had, on more
mature thoughts, abandoned the project. He had done so for reasons
creditable to his considerateness and good-sense. It had occurred to him
that the English might like to think out the details of their church
reformation for themselves, that it might do more harm than good to
thrust an elaborated Scottish system upon them as a perfection already
consummate, and that it might even be becoming in the Scots to hold
themselves prepared, in the interests of the conformity they desired, to
gravitate toward what might be the English conclusions on nonessential
points. At all events, he had come to see that the work was too great
for the responsibility of any one man. Possibly, too, he knew by that
time (April, 1642) that a general synod of English divines would very
soon be called.

Actually, in April, 1642, just when Henderson gave up the business as
too great for one man's strength, the English House of Commons were
making arrangements for a synod of divines. On the 19th of that month it
was ordered by the House, in pursuance of previous resolutions on the
subject, "that the names of such divines as shall be thought fit to be
consulted with concerning the matter of the Church be brought in
to-morrow morning," the understood rule being that the knights and
burgesses of each English county should name to the House _two_ divines,
and those of each Welsh county _one_ divine, for approval. Accordingly,
on the 20th, the names were given in; on that day the divines proposed
for nine of the English counties were approved of in pairs; and on
following days the rest of the English counties--London and the two
universities coming in for separate representation--were gone over,
pretty much in their alphabetical order, the Welsh counties and the
Channel islands coming last, till, on April 25th, the tale of the
divines "thought fit to be consulted with" was complete. It included one
hundred two divines, generally from the counties for which they were
severally named; but by no means always so, for in not a few cases the
knights and burgesses of distant counties nominated divines living in
London or near it.

In almost a